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No Sea Voyage on Tuesdays

Informant Bio: Informant is a friend and fellow business major. He is a sophomore at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. His family is from Mexico. He has moved around both Mexico and the U.S., spending significant time in Illinois. He currently lives in Southern California.

Context: I was interviewing Stan about folk beliefs and traditions that he has been exposed to. He shared with me the following folk belief common among the people in Mexico.

Item: “El martes no te cases ni te embarcues” – never embark on a voyage on a Tuesday. If you do, your ship will sink. Even if you don’t believe it, people still don’t “test” it.”

Informant Analysis: Not sure about why Tuesday is bad, but people in his town heed this rule.

Analysis: Although the specific day of Tuesday might be related to some distant family member or someone in the village experiencing bad sailing luck on a Tuesday, the superstition has stuck around and pervaded in the town of the informant. Most likely, empirical evidence would show no merit to the claim, but the people in this town must subscribe to the idea that the day of the week inherently has virtues or characteristics that are associated with it.